I worked a bit on the new classes in the office, and I changed my mind about the paladin and the ranger. The core book already recommends sending characters on quests to achieve special abilities. Making this necessary to advance is not only an annoying penalty for the class, but it also makes such characters steal the spotlight from the others.

Thus I'll only use the iconic abilities for paladins, rangers and antipaladins - if you want something else, talk to your Judge. Antipaladin? Yes, I think the latter is different enough to deserve a class of it's own. My only problem is that I don't like the "antipaladin" name. How should I call a champion of chaos? Blackguard? Reaver? If you have a better idea, please share it with me.

I also have some notes for druids, psionic abilites, psionic combat, but it's too early to talk about them.

You answered your own question - you've got a great name right there. I would be proud to defeat a "Champion of Chaos" that the DM set up as a major villain. It doesn't need much to sell it. Antipaladins are NPCs, right? So your players will know the antipaladin by his frightening nicknames and not by his class anyway. NPC peasants will cross themselves before saying his name... "He is Melchiron, the champion of chaos, the demonic scourge of the Free Lands. He is the devourer of all that is good and true, the black blade of The Unclean Horsemen, and I last saw him heading for your granny's house in Elfburg." I think they'll get the picture. (Unless of course your antipaladin is a player class. I never saw the point of that - the game is supposed to be hard, and the good guys will always have a tougher path than the bad guy.)

But to play devil's advocate, I don't think any special class that is separate from Warrior should get the Mighty Deeds of Arms as you suggest. I think the game is best when there's a reason to choose a vanilla fighter or dwarf instead of the prestigious Paladin and Ranger. Building a new class on top of everything a Warrior can do is the same power gamer path that Unearthed Arcana took. No one wanted to be a Fighter when the Cavalier is the same plus more. The fighter having this unique and "quadratic" combat ability is my absolute favourite new DCC feature.

Instead, if you want paladins with Deeds, let the background handle anything you want a ranger or knight to be. If a player comes up to me and says my Warrior is good with bows and was a huntsman in level 0, I will say fine, great, do a good job roleplaying your wilderness skills and I will follow along. Suddenly, any player with a Warrior character and a good imagination can play a ranger, paladin, pirate, swashbuckler, barbarian, duelist, whatever.

Feels like the game does this now. It is set up to let creativity remove the need for special rules. Any neutral cleric can become a druid, your wizard's patron decides his speciality (fire, necromancer, summoner, etc) and chaotic thieves ARE assassins.

And not to bring you down Ravenheart, but I really liked your idea of leveling up only through questing before you changed your mind. Why not have new paladin-esque abilities granted after a successful quest? Beats the player thinking, "Four more dungeons and I gain a level". I think extraordinary risk->reward is much better storytelling than grind->reward. Now each new ability means more because there is a story behind it. If you go with my lowercase-p paladin being in the Warrior class, it's a great rationale for why this PC has more than the standard powers. As for stealing the spotlight... well you need your adventure hooks to come from somewhere don't you? Make it tie in to the other players' goals and suddenly everyone's invested. "Sir Bruce, defeat that evil enchanter! Oh, and I bet the enchanter has that spell you're looking for, Merlina."

After reading the core rulebook pdf, and getting the sense that treasure is more valuable and rarer than before, and magic is waaay less common than before, I think it will fit the theme of the game if prestige classes and new class abilities are also far less common than they are in 4.0/3.5/PF. Doesn't that match with the psychology of it? The more your players will see that X is uncommon and special, the more they will appreciate X? Don't let them play a paladin, halfling thief or gnome illusionist until they've been a man-at-arms or trusty ol' cleric-of-Pelor for six months. (Or until they figure out how much power is in their grasp with so few official rules and so much leeway for roleplaying to get the character they want, instead of rule maxing.)

The reason why I want to have some special races and classes in my campaign is that I like them, just like my players. I love tinkering with mechanics and game elements, just as I love building my sandbox. My favourite sources for inspiration are the Judges Guild products, the Arduin books and since last year, the DCC RPG. No wonder I like "hacking", and DCC RPG is a good base for that: instead of having a lot of character options and few rules I want to expand, it has few character options and just as many rules I want to use. Why is this so good for me? Because adding classes or races is to a rules light game is easier, than writing up mechanics for patrons, critical hit charts and other cool extra stuff.

You mentioned one of the issues I want to address: why play a warrior, if you can play a ranger, paladin or antipaladin/blackguard/villain/chaos warrior? Because the warrior is a badass fighting machine. The "elite" classes are specialized and thus aren't always as effective as the warrior. The paladin is very good fighting creatures of chaos, but once the party faces neutral and lawful enemies, he isn't as good as the warrior. The ranger is very effective in the wilderness finding and hunting down monsters, but he's less useful in dungeons or when he needs to face an enemy in brutal melée combat toe to toe. The monk is superb martial artist, but he's only effective with a few weapons, he can't wear heavy armour and he has far less hit points than the warrior. These classes are going to be like the dwarf class of the core rules: dwarves have cool abilities, but they aren't superior and don't overshadow the warrior.

About good guys having tougher path than evil ones... This is only true until the Judge realizes that karma is a bitch, and starts using some kind of "angry villagers rule" or a challanger appears. I think it's logical that once a champion appears and has notable effect on an area, the gods of the opposing side will send one to defeat him. Or fate brings one:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhRUe-gz690

Maybe this is a good way to bind advancement to quests, á la AD&D: on higher levels, you'll need to defeat an antipaladin (if you're a paladin), a martial arts master (if you're a monk), an orc warlord (if you're a ranger) to advance. You're right, I shall not throw out the baby with the bathwater. I already have some ideas about having a middle way...

I was thinking a bit more about handling alternate classes. As I mentioned before, assassins are already covered by thieves, so I had no plans for adding them. I realized I don't need a druid class either: I'm going to give the various clerics unique spell list, maybe a few wizard spells to some and it's good to go. The classes I really wanted to add to the game were the paladins of various faiths, rangers, monks. These are all martial classes, that I feel the base Warrior doesn't cover very well. The big question is, do they really need their own classes?

Building classes is fun plus this way I can make them more different from Warriors. The only problem is, that this requires more work and leads to having more and more "Warrior sub-classes" over time, which makes the Warrior only one variation of himself. I decided I won't add more martial classes, but instead I'm going to introduce a way to make two warriors more different from each other.

Enter militant orders! Joining one is not an easy task, and while you get bonuses, they have their own restrictions too. It's easier to write one order up, doesn't results in such unnecessary complexity like adding a new class, the Warrior class remains "The Warrior", characters can enter on various levels to an order and this solution goes hand in hand with DCC's "quest for it" mentality. An example:

To join the Rangers of the Borderlands a lawful Warrior must prove himself worthy by doing a task for them, like killing a dangerous beast or recovering an artifact. During his training the rookie learns how to track creatures, move silently, hide in shadows and use magic items - the wilderness is full of ancient ruins and the rangers learned many arcane secret from their elven allies and captured barbarian druids. As a member of the rangers, he may never have more fortune than he can carry, he must obey the orders of the ranger lords and once every level he must do a quest for them. Leaving the order is not a good idea, the rangers are quick to hunt down renegades.

The most important militant orders, groups, tribes in my campaign are going to be the following (names may change until July):

Enter militant orders! Joining one is not an easy task, and while you get bonuses, they have their own restrictions too. It's easier to write one order up, doesn't results in such unnecessary complexity like adding a new class, the Warrior class remains "The Warrior", characters can enter on various levels to an order and this solution goes hand in hand with DCC's "quest for it" mentality.

I think this is a great idea! And one I will gladly nick and incorporate into my DCC game!I must admit I have always been a fan of lots of choice for character classes. With that though, as well as other people on this thread, I have questioned the need for rangers when we have fighters, assassins when we have thieves, illusionists as well as magic users etc.

Enter militant orders! Joining one is not an easy task, and while you get bonuses, they have their own restrictions too. It's easier to write one order up, doesn't results in such unnecessary complexity like adding a new class, the Warrior class remains "The Warrior", characters can enter on various levels to an order and this solution goes hand in hand with DCC's "quest for it" mentality.

I think this is a great idea! And one I will gladly nick and incorporate into my DCC game!I must admit I have always been a fan of lots of choice for character classes. With that though, as well as other people on this thread, I have questioned the need for rangers when we have fighters, assassins when we have thieves, illusionists as well as magic users etc.

This is the implication of pages 46-47, isn't it? Scads of crunch is not needed -- the solution is always flavor...

This is the implication of pages 46-47, isn't it? Scads of crunch is not needed -- the solution is always flavor...

Yes, I think it's pretty clear that pages 46-47 are the sources for inspiration. For some orders, I'm going to add some crunch in my campaign, because I'd like to make their members a bit different from each other - but not as much as I would have if I created new classes. For others, it's just flavour.

You are a warrior of the wild, a spelunker who hunts the dark things that threaten the world, the will of nature manifest. With bow and blade you cleave your way through the enemies of the great untamed wilds.

Hit Points: A ranger gains 1d8 hit points at each level.

Weapon Training: A ranger is trained in a variety of weapons: battleaxe, club, dagger, dart, handaxe, javelin, longbow, longsword, shortbow, shortsword, spear, and staff. Rangers can wear up to mithril chainmail, and may use shields if they desire.

Alignment: Ranger's follow a variety of different paths. A lawful ranger seeks the dark and twisted abberations, un-dead and demons that desecrate the wild places by their very presence. Neutral rangers patrol the borders of the wild places, keeping it safe from all threats, man or malice. Chaotic rangers are the hungry spirits of the wild, seeking the blood of civilized people to feed the trees and beasts of the wild to balance the scales of progress.

Attack Modifiers: Unlike other classes, rangers do not receive a fixed attack modifier per level. Instead they receive a randomized modifier known as a deed die. At first level this is a d3. He rolls this d3 and adds the rolled number to all of his attack and damage rolls for the round. He only rolls this deed die once per round, and it applies to all of the attacks he makes in that round and can be used for mighty deeds, see below.

Mighty Deed of Arms: Rangers protect the wild places with their expert skill in battle. They may perform disarms, knock backs and other impressive feats with their skill. Prior to attacking, a ranger can declare a mighty deed of arms. Successes requires a 3 or higher on their deed die, and requires that the attack hits the defender's armor class. For more information of Mighty Deeds and combat feats, see page 88 of the DCC RPG.

Pathfinder: Rangers add their level as a bonus to move silently and hide in shadows checks. These skills function for a ranger as if they were a thief. In natural settings they receive a +2 bonus to these rolls. A ranger may use their move silently check to avoid leaving behind tracks or any other sign of their passage. A ranger also adds their level in checks to identify poisonous plants, natural snares and pits, tracking rolls and wilderness checks to navigate and avoid becoming lost.

Infravision: As elves, rangers can see 60' in the dark.

Heightened Senses: Elves are astute and observant. All elves receive a +4 bonus to perception checks. In addition, when passing within 10 feet of a secret or concealed door an elf may automatically roll to detect it.

Vulnerability: Elves are extremely sensitive to the touch of iron. Direct contact causes burning sensations and even exposure at close distances makes them uncomfortable. Prolonged contact with iron causes the loss of one hp at the end of the day.

Favored Enemies: At first level, fourth level, and seventh level a ranger may select a favored enemy among those that bring harm to nature. The most common enemies include: aberrations, deep dwarves, demons, goblins, humans, orcs, and un-dead, but can include others at the judges discretion. When fighting against their favored enemies, a ranger's deed die is increased by one step and all skill checks to hunt or track their favored enemy receive a bonus equal to the ranger's level (this is in addition to the bonuses from pathfinder).

I think it's a bit overpowered if you ask me. My biggest issue is that they are nearly as good in a dungeon setting as the wilderness. I would probably reduce their pathfinder bonus to cap out at +6 but improve their bonus in the wilderness to +4 (or something along those lines: ie. level bonus +2 but reduced to 1/2 in non-wilderness settings etc.). I also think their deed die is too high and should probably cap at +d10.

"The worthy GM never purposely kills players' PCs, He presents opportunities for the rash and unthinking players to do that all on their own." -- Gary Gygax"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Just roll the die and I will let you know!" -- Dave Arneson

My biggest issue is that they are nearly as good in a dungeon setting as the wilderness.

I agree that a Ranger shouldn't be as good at the sneaky stuff in a dungeon or urban setting as he would be in a wilderness environment. That should be mentioned in the write-up somewhere.

I was kind of wanting a dungeon-delving aberrant/undead hunter type for the lawful ranger. Maybe I could have the pathfinder bonus change based on level? I was wanting to keep the rules as toned down as I could though. Less checking of the book the better imo.

Pathfinder: Bonus equal to 1/2 level +2 in wilderness areas. Sneak and Hide as a thief (uncontested) only in wilderness areas: Forests, plains, , swamps, mountains, and caves. In dungeons and urban areas they are contested as others.

Favored Enemies: Deed die step up of a level, instead of increasing the deed die. Makes no difference at the early levels but limits the deed die to a d10 at higher levels.

I just submitted a thread that's waiting for moderator approval for my attempt at a 1e style bard as well as some info about a deity for druids and bards I'm going to come up with as well.

My version of the Bard goes back to 1st edition where Bards didn't actually have any mechanical skills regarding music or performances, but are rather characters that combine skills and abilities from fighter, thieves and druids. I plan on making them open to humans and a half-elf race I'm also coming up with.

Half elves will have the benefits and drawbacks of elves, but have to choose a specific class like humans and lose their longevity (though they will still be long lived compared to most humans). But I want to make them so that they're also really rare as well, maybe a percentile chance that a human had an elvish parent.

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